HOP's First Article, Self-Promotion, and Self-Loathing

Today sees the first actual article being posted on the House of Paincakes blog.  It's from Kirby, and I think you'll all like it.  There will be a link below.  Actually, half of Kirby's first article is up, to be more correct.  We split it in two at the last minute- shit was long, yo. 

Just to update everyone, the HOP is still moving along at a pretty good pace.  This week will see us working with a daily post schedule.  If you're interested in writing for he HOP, e-mail us with your ideas and we'll see what happens. 

In other news, my second FNIF: Extra Innings went up on BoK and nobody seems to have noticed :(  Please go check it out and comment so I can stop feeling bad about life.  Thanks to Brent for being the first and only commenter thus far. 

Here are some links for you guys:

Kirby's Article

FNIF: Extra Innings

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 26

This week's fight was brought to my attention by stormy.  I'm glad he e-mailed it to me, because with setting up the House of Paincakes and needing to look for a FNIF: Extra Innings fight as well, I've been pretty busy.  Add to that needing to find textbooks, get shot down for a job I was feeling good about, and my step mom's partial paralysis at the hands of spinal inflammation (she's getting better after steroid treatments), and it's been a busy week or so.

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 25 Results Show

Another week has gone by and with it another fight has entered the annals of history. With a total of only 60 votes, this fight was down a little from the norm (high 70s+).  No worries, we'll get them next time.  More importantly, we're back to normal with nobody winning the fight.  Kraken got close with his 18% of the vote, but could not compete with the non sequiturs.

We had a tie for the winner at 26% each.  It was conclusively proved that, in spite of a noble effort, Brent is not Cormac McCarthy and that many of you clicked on the e-mail about the spider and never came back.  If I didn't have to write the damn thing, I probably would have never returned from that e-mail either; that guy can troll.  Keeping with the fight's pervasive nautical theme, 21% of you thought that all of the participants should be sent to Davy Jones' Locker.

Activity Time...  As you all chomp at the bit over this next hour or so While I finish FNIF round 26, here are some things you can do.

1. Check out and join the House of Paincakes
2. Read up on the forthcoming movie based on Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian.  Fun fact: the film's director played 'ol Drippy on Aqua Teen Hunger Force
3. Check out the David Thorne (the Australian responsible for the spider e-mail) website.  Note, at the time of writing, the site was having DNS issues, but should be up again some day.

Everyone Loves a Good Star Wars Joke

Yeah, that picture showed up in a comment thread on my band's facebook page.  I almost pissed my pants when I saw it.  I think it's probably the greatest thing ever.

I've been running around non-stop with the pleasantly surprising flood of submissions, applicants, supplicants, and general drudge work surrounding yesterday's highly successful launch of the House of Paincakes blog network.  I'd just like to thank everyone who helped make the launch successful.  I must have seen at least 20 posts announcing the network yesterday, about 2/3 of which were entirely unsolicited.  All in all we signed up somewhere around 50 blogs yesterday, got 30 new followers, 5 or 6 facebook 'likes,' and have already seen evidence (via google analytics and testimonials) that people are getting increased hits from the network members.  Not bad for a day's work.  Good to see something go right. 

To reward all of you that have helped out, here is one of the greatest youtube videos ever-

The House of Paincakes is Now Open for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

That's right, there's a new blog network in town, serving up piping hot portions of pain daily.  Perhaps you've heard vague rumblings about it all ready.  Maybe you've even seen the logo.  Well we're happy to announce that it's now open for business.  The House of Paincakes blog network is here to make sure that all of us finally get the opportunity to promote our blogs.

There's a lot more to be said about the network than I can fit in a reasonable post.  Sufficed to say that as the site owners, Lauby and I, are very excited about what's to come.  If that's isn't enough, go check out our vision.  We've got loads of top secret plans for the near future and the long haul to grow this thing beyond it's humble roots.  More than anything, though, we're looking forward to promoting your blogs, hobby events, and community.

For information on joining the network click the link above to the site and poke around or go straight to our code of conduct and then join us.  Of course if you like what you see, be sure to spread the word.  We'd appreciate any publicity to help get this off the ground.

Looking forward to the Future....

Dethtron Sells Out or Buys In or Something

Not getting enough FNIF in your diet? Some kind of crazy glutton for punishment?  Well have I got just the thing for you. After weeks of strong negotiations, I have entered into a multi-million dollar contract to bring my new series, Friday Night Internet Fight: Extra Innings to Blood of Kittens.


The first one is up now. Like right here.

Here's an excerpt to get your taste buds going....

‘Why extra innings?’ you ask. Well because when it’s 4th and goal with seconds on the clock and you’re 10 points down you’ve got to reach down inside yourself, give it 110%, and sink that corner kick is why.

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 25

I've got something a little bit different for you this week.  This is actually closer to what I intended FNIF to be like when I conceived of it.  Today's fight basically just consists of 2 people.  This is a rarity, as everybody on the Internet has an opinion about everything.  Special thanks to everybody's favorite Kindermörder, M., for e-mailing me this fight.  To be honest, I usually avoid looking into threads that are over 400 pages long, but since he gave me specific page numbers and the fight was fairly self-contained, editing this became almost doable, although if you look at the actual thread and see how much quoting went on, you'll understand that this was a true nightmare to put together. 

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 24 Results Show

It's been quite a while, but we have an actual winner from last week's fight.  Given the level of insanity, derailment, and general discourse on the topic of tentacle porn*, I was very curious to see who would win out.  Honestly I just assumed that, like most weeks, "whoever wins, society loses" (15%) or the most absurd answer- in this case "I think you can shake an enema" (22%)- would draw votes away from the actual participants.  The absurd answers are like the green party of FNIF after all. 

With a great turnout of 79 voters this week, it is with great pride in my heart that I congratulate Molochi for capturing 32% of your hearts, thereby winning the fight.  I guess this goes to show that if you can do it in a clever enough or endearing enough way, trolling is pretty hilarious.  Speaking of which, bushidoredpanda managed to get a 10% share of the market and proceeded to make a jackass out of himself elsewhere.  For evidence of that, please see everywhere on the Internet.

Round 25 is coming up.  Until then: I just realized I don't have a catch phrase for signing off.  Worst newscaster ever.


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*I have a friend, Anatoly, who claims that years ago he saw a vendor selling live action tentacle porn videos at Chicago Comicon.  He has yet to provide proof of this.

The Continuing saga of the DJ

Haven't written since Monday, for which I do apologize.  Basically I have been sleeping since then after what started out as the first really bad seasonal allergy attack I've had in years turned into a wicked summer cold.  Watching the mucus pouring from every orifice on my face slowly turn from clear (allergies) to green and brown (cold) over the last few days has been great.  So, not feeling the energy to blog, I just kept active on a few conversations regarding the would allocation explosion.

U Mad DJ?

Looks like it's two misses in a row for one of the newer BoLS writers.  Here's hoping for a 3rd strike, resulting in him being thrown off the site.  From the man who brought us the tale of chicken little explaining quite erroneously how the new* concept of true line of site is killing warhammer, we get a wonderfully terrible write up of why wound allocation is ruining the game.  Seriously, if there are so many forces conspiring against your ability to enjoy the game, maybe you should just quit.

Mathelete of the Week: Sepharine

It's been a while since we've had a mathlete of the week here on Dick Move, but the mathematics community has been very quiet in the 40 Universe lately.  All you kids must not want to talk about how awesome math is during your summer breaks or something.

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 24

Woohoo, it's Friday again; you're sick of seeing everybody's Nova Open musings but looking forward to the event coverage and looking to blow off some steam.  Well welcome aboard the pain train that is FNIF.

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 23 Results Show

We had 60 votes this week.  That's 9 away from giving me something saucy to say about it.  Regardless, the voting panned out pretty much like I would have predicted, with the actual participants all combined only securing 14% of the vote and Melissia and MutantLoveFist getting 6% each.  I'll assume that Mutant's votes were ironic- I know mine for him was <@;o)

56% of you did wonder whether there was even a fight going on, but could agree that MutantLoveFist was a tool. The remaining 26% of you wanted to ditch the fight to go talk about Sisters of Battle.  Nice!  Well here's your chance.  Talk about the SoBs in the comments here if that's what you really want.

School Of Seven Bells

New York's School of Seven Bells has been described as shoegaze, dreampop, ethereal, and any number of other completely meaningless genre distinctions.  Comprised of the identical twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza and Benjamin Curtis, formerly of Secret Machines, the band released their second full length, Disconnect from Desire, in July of 2010.  I was pretty much floored the second I heard it.  So much so that their first album, Alpinisms, should be arriving in the mail shortly. 

Working with a completely backasswards technique, the group actually writes their lyrics before anything else.  The rest is all added in to the tracks later in what they describe as simple "accompaniment."  Well whatever they're doing, it works.  Blending the textures of the old 4AD records dreampoppy sound (primarily Cocteau Twins and early Dead Can Dance) with the droning shoegaze of acts like Ride and M83 and catchy synthpop hooks reminiscent of Ladytron (this Ladytron, not this Ladytron, though both are great), they've managed to create a very satisfying and relaxing listening experience.  If you like any of the groups I've mentioned, you'll love School of Seven Bells.  If you haven't heard of any of those groups, but like what you're about to here, go back and follow those links.  I promise you won't regret it. 

Here are some videos from Disconnect from Desire

News Flash: White Dwarf Still Sucks

Time for my shameful admission: I have a White Dwarf subscription.  Worse yet, they conned me into getting it at a GW store, so I don't even get it mailed to me.  I have to hop in the car to pick up a freaking magazine that is barely worth the paper it's printed on. 

E-mail In: Nerd Humor and Blog Advice, 2 Semi-related Topics, I promise

I have some thoughts of my own kicking around in my head- I know shocker, right?- but as I can barely type right now I'm going to do something of a more copy/paste nature from my inbox.  I won't assault you with brutal details, but sufficed to say it isn't a good idea to switch types of drumsticks on a night where you are playing 2 sets covering about 2 hours plus total. 

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 23

Holy hell it took me forever to find a fight this week.  With people decompressing from Warbolscon and others being tied up in Nova Open preparations, things were quiet on the Internets this week.   I even had several people in on the search.  They found some pretty choice stuff on Dakka, but I picked on them last week, and didn't want to go down that road again for this round. 

Friday Night Internet Fight, Round 22 Results Show

It's Friday again.  Time to loosen your belts in preparation for choking down another steaming pile of FNIF before throwing caution to the wind and streaking Lauby's No Pants Fridays.  But first we have to get this little formality out of the way and announce the "winner" of last week's fight.

If you guessed that nobody, as always, would win the fight then you guessed right.  I'm frankly a little sad this week since we had another super-mod attack and one of my favorites, Nosferatu1001 (4%), give BlackBlowFly (1% from his own vote I'm assuming) one of the best one line digs I've seen in a good long while.  With a total of 72 votes this week we're continuing to see pretty good voter turnout.  If I wanted to increase it I'd probably have to start pandering to the elderly, but do we really want to deal with Woody Herman (if I had a dollar for every time I had to play that song at a senior center I could probably go buy a sandwich) and Spike Jones jokes?  How about this one?  'What's the deal with bowel movements.  It's like I keep taking my fibre suppositories but you still only come once a week.'  Well Seinfeld I am not....

Back on track, Kirsanth and Insaniak ( both with 20%) fought it out bitterly to snag the #2 slot in the fight, but were unable to defeat the Juggernaut that is "the next person to quote the dictionary gets punched in the dick," which racked up a staggering 41% of the vote.  Stay tuned and we'll get you this week's fight shortly.

New Logo Contest

Those of you that have been here for the duration of this several month long hellride may remember me mentioning at one point that my logo and layout were all temporary.  Here we are 3++ months later and I still have the same old shit* gracing this space.

Time to change all that.  The thing is I suck at art.  I'm ok at painting minis and all that rot, but when it comes to drawing something or photoshopping shit together, I fail at life.

This is where you come in.  If you have any abilities at all (no matter how bad they are- actually sucking might be a bonus), I want to see what you can do.  Send in your logo submissions to sodoffdethtron@gmail.com and I will post them for everyone to review.  The winner gets the super amazing prize of being the new logo.  Tits!  I'd like to keep the logo design in the same vein ::facepalm:: as the current one.  Several people, including myself have talked about incorporating a flamer template.  That could be an idea to run with.

Also if anybody is good with layouts and has a snazzy template they think might spruce things up around here, let me know. 

Since I'm likely to not get any submissions- Fuck you all in advance ;P

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*no disrespect to Lauby who did an awesome job designing the temporary logo, but it's time for something more "finished" feeling.

The Massacres- The End of an Era

If you live in or around the Chicago area and like music, my Psychobilly band, the Massacres, will be performing our last show ever opening up for the Nekromantix this Saturday.  Details can be found here.  We'll also be playing an afterparty set featuring most of (if not all of) our catalog after the show is over next door to the venue.  It should be a great night and you'll get your money's worth.

It will be a little bit of a bittersweet night for us as this band has been around for quite a while and has taken us all over the country in some of the smelliest vans ever to grace the earth.  As I'm not a founding member as such I can toot the band's horn a little bit and say that they were responsible for bringing a Psychobilly scene to Chicago.  There are a dozen or more bands playing out in the area now and several of them have cited us as one of their biggest influences. 

The singer (Hoagy- you've seen him lurking here before), bass player, and myself will be recording an EP shortly with our new metal band Crusader that should prove to be most excellent.  I'll also be meeting with a producer this weekend to discuss finding me a female singer for several hours worth of synthpop tracks that I've written over the years.  I'm looking forward to what's to come musically and to giving the Massacres a kick ass sendoff.

What's that?  You want to see a live video taken from an awkward angle featuring my ass sweating all over a drumset and poor sound?  Well here you go:



Here's a bonus video with a better angle and sound:

E-mail in: Bullies and other such pushy douche-bags

E-mail in.  Yeah I get e-mails from people too.  Suck it legitimate hobby blogs.  We're going to get seriously serious for serious here for a minute (can't even be seriously for serious without cracking wise grammatically, eh?) and talk about a topic that has bugged me for a while and is in all actuality part of the reason I started this site:  Cyber-bullying- well that or just being a dick in general perhaps possibly maybe.

Reserving and it's useless....

I just peeped an article on Librarium Online about Deep Striking and its Uses by Karman_seaking (is he king of the sea or just bad at spelling seeking).  See what I did with my own title there.  Pretty clever, eh? 

For Science!

Just in case you're not reading 3++ is the new black, and if you're not, what the hell is wrong with you?!?, I wanted to make you aware of Kirby's thesis research he is conducting for an advanced degree in psychology or psionics or peeschchology or something like that.  Anyway I took his survey about Internet use and it proved to be pretty painless.  I blacked out at some point, but I seriously doubt that it was due in any part to electroshock.  Anyhow, in spite of his assertion that the survey would take 30 minutes, I think I knocked it out in under 10.

So go take his survey for the love of science:  here there be surveys It is likely not to electrocute you.